A long tree branch with many bare branches coming out of it in contrast with a light grey sky.

Creative angers

For anger to be healthy it has to be expressed the moment it is felt and towards the source that causes it. If it gets repressed at that moment, expressing it later with something else only serves the purpose of adding grievance to the world. 

The original anger stays where we put it when we wouldn’t or couldn’t express it: creating resentment together with all the other trapped angers.

I don’t fare well when I am surrounded by angry people. I get stomach aches. I fantasise with the idea of connecting them to a battery so that the anger that they spread around them can be used to run a washing machine or watch TV. That way the inconveniences caused by their unprocessed feelings are compensated by solving the energy future. 

When I can’t express my own anger I make art. What works best is not to choose a subject with which to enrage myself, that only leads to obsession, but to transfer the energy to the mark making. Turning an ugly feeling into an untamed force, like a whirlwind, using the destructive energy to create. Completing the cycle instead of blocking it with dams. 

Although, if the anger is international, generational and omnipresent, the only thing that works is to hide and paint flowers.